Muqtada Emerging as Kingmaker

"Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji, preacher at the Fatimiyah Husainiyah in Najaf, said in his Friday sermon that militiamen must be recruited into the state security forces, and that no government can be strong in their presence. Al-Qubanji is a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), whose Badr Corps paramilitary is increasingly being absorbed into local police forces and the national Interior Ministry special police commandos. In Najaf context, he is probably saying that the Mahdi Militia of Muqtada al-Sadr is a problem for the regularized Badr in the local police force.

The Sunni hard line Association of Muslim Scholars had said on Thursday that the cancer of militias has spread in Iraq and that the paramilitaries were responsible for horrendous abuses against the human rights of Iraqis.

The preacher at the (Sunni) mosque attached to the shrine of Abdu'l-Qadir Gilani, Shaikh Mahmud al-Isawi, said that the murderous activities of the militias boggled the mind. (Al-Isawi belongs to the mystical, Sufi form of Islam that opposes hard line militant Salafism and Wahhabism). He detailed bloody attacks and asked "Where is the mercy? Where is Islam?""
Juan Cole

Or the new king